Through My Hands
by Cassandra Mulder
Summary: No matter how much she wanted a second chance, it seemed to keep slipping through her hands.


**Title: **Through My Hands  
**Author: **Cassandra Mulder  
**Rating: **PG  
**Classification: **_The Office_; Jim/Pam  
**Disclaimer: **Not mine. I cry about this into my pillow every night. No infringement is intended.  
**Summary: **No matter how much she wanted a second chance, it seemed to keep slipping through her hands.  
**Word Count:** 1305  
**Written: **August 2 - 5, 2007  
**Prompt/Request:** for officeficathon; hands  
**A/N:** I apologize for this being a bit late. And for the heavily overused metaphors. If I sound pretentious, trust me, that was an accident. My muse threw something surprisingly difficult at me, because while this might look like a simple narrative, it might bear bruises from the way I wrestled with it. lol All I thought about when I took the prompt was Jim's hands, so next time perhaps I won't let my crush get the better of me. hee ;) I hope you enjoy anyway. Remember, feedback is love!

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Pam had been passing him his messages the first time his hand had brushed hers. It had shocked her a little how she'd had to catch her breath as he smiled and walked back to his desk.

It was only her second day at Dunder Mifflin, and even though he had taken her to lunch the day before there had been no contact.

Jim was sweet, and even though she suspected he might have a little crush on her, she didn't feel threatened in any way. He was a perfect gentleman, and he was really fun to talk to. It hadn't taken her long to get used to having a guy friend.

There were huddles to plan pranks on Dwight and high fives when they were successful. Somewhere along the way he became her best friend, and she gave little thought to how close they were. It was just something that _was_, and it seemed to sustain them both in the insanity of their workplace.

Jim had been clutching her hand in a moment of mirth the first time she thought Roy was going to kill him. It had been totally innocent, and she had been too focused on breathing while laughing so hard to realize it might have looked like anything more.

The look on Jim's face as she let Roy lead her away had haunted her for awhile.

She couldn't say there had been no physical contact between them after that. She had kissed him at the '05 Dundies and that went way beyond any unintentional hand holding, but she'd had the tidy excuse of three too many margaritas.

Every time he came to visit her at reception, and he leaned there with his forearms on her desk, his hands were right within her line of sight. She always dutifully paid attention to whatever he was saying, but sometimes his hands right there in front of her could drive her to near-distraction as they fiddled with a jellybean or tapped some unknown beat on the desktop. He had no idea what he was doing to her, and she always guiltily put the thoughts away as quickly as they'd come.

It was hard to quell the thoughts anymore after the day they had taken the excursion to Dwight's dojo. She had begun the morning "reading" his palm, which was basically just a lame but accepted excuse to study his hand. His fingers were warm and surprisingly soft in hers, and his palm spread wide made her own hands feel extremely small.

Things only escalated at the dojo when he had playfully tackled her. She was battling her own unwanted feelings at the sensation of his body against hers and his hands accidentally skimming her bare stomach where her shirt had ridden up in the struggle. Meredith catching them had only given her the out she would have given herself if she hadn't been so completely unraveled at his touch.

She hated the confusion and hurt on his face as she huffed and walked away, making much more out of it than there should have been. She felt like she was always confusing him, but she spent so much of the time confused herself that she couldn't really help it.

The last time she would be close to him for a long time was when he obliterated her world with five words and one kiss in ten minutes that she could never forget. The feel of his hands spanning her waist almost completely, the feel of his chest beneath her fingers, the way he held her hands when she pulled away were all burned into her memory.

When she told him she was going through with the plans she had made, even when everything in her heart was telling her to stop lying to him, his hands had slid from hers and he walked away. Both her heart and her hands had felt horribly empty every day after that.

She had hated herself for letting him go, and it took all the courage she hadn't known she had to leave Roy and start over. The one person she couldn't lie to anymore was herself.

Months dragged by before a miraculous branch merger happened and she saw him again. He came back, and she threw herself into his arms, hoping it would be the first step to permanent residence there. But his hands fell away from her again along with a great deal of her hope, the last of which was dashed with a stranger's touch in that parking lot with which she had come to associate nothing but terrible things in her life.

No matter how much she wanted a second chance, it seemed to keep slipping through her hands. She went over the dozens of ways to just tell him that she needed him, what he had offered on a spring night; that she had regretted everything she hadn't done every second since. None of it would come because she thought that he had moved on with someone else.

Gone were the chats over jellybeans, his rolled up sleeves, the brilliant plans for elaborate pranks on Dwight, the smiles, the laughter, the comfort that came from simply knowing she was his best friend and he was hers. He wasn't hers anymore. He belonged to someone else, even as she struggled with the refrain of _mine_ every time Karen chipped away at a part of who he was, or stole smiles that she took pleasure in just because they weren't exactly the same as the ones he had always given her.

Things were unbearable until the day he brought her Andy's cell phone for safekeeping until she could slip it into his hand later with all the finesse of a CIA drop on _Alias_, and they had spent the day listening to terrible four-part harmony coming from the ceiling. That small bit of contact renewed the hope that things could at least be normal, if not perfect, between them again. But after that he had seemed even more shut off than before, and she learned that she couldn't trust in hope so much anymore.

The things she had done as a result were not things she took any joy in reliving. They had helped her to grow, and to finally reach the moment in which she stopped all the games they played and allowed herself to be honest with him for the first time in their relationship. Whatever he and the others did with that honesty was up to them, but she had never felt lighter or more like who she was meant to be than that night.

When he came to check on her after and they talked, it wasn't hope that had swelled in her chest, but acceptance. Acceptance of who they were, where they were, and the things for which she might have to settle just to keep him in her life. When he hugged her it was like a friend, though the feelings that went with it didn't feel at all friendly for her, and she had no idea what he was thinking.

It was happiness that finally reappeared in her life a week later just when she was ready to lose him forever to a city and a woman she knew didn't become him at all. But she was ready to let him go if that's what he needed, and that was seemingly what brought him back to her with the revelation that he couldn't let _her_ go.

When he took her to dinner that night, he held her hand at every opportunity. She reveled in the knowledge that finally, after every seemingly unforgivable mistake and dark road it took to get there, he was _hers_, and she finally knew what it would take to keep him in her hands.

Finis


End file.
